Everything is equally weird - On Graham Harman's philosophy

A brief overview of Graham Harman’s weird realism and his object oriented philosophy (OOP). This is part of a longer series of videos on thinkers and concepts that we’re working on right now. The next one should be out in two weeks.
00:15 Part I - Object Oriented Philosophy
01:54 Part II - Flat Ontology
04:24 Part III - Reductions
05:47 Part IV - Objects
07:40 Part V - Causality
09:10 Part VI - Final thoughts
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Here are other videos where we used similar concepts, from OOO to flat ontology and others.
Anthropocene - The great party
• Anthropocene - The gr...
Climate Crisis - THE FINAL EXAM!
• Climate Crisis - The f...
Towards an ontology of the commons
• Towards an ontology of...
Credits
Written by Aron Nor
Writing suggestions by M
Recorded by M & Aron Nor
Illustrations made by Mina
Video/Audio editing by Aron Nor
Music by
Gypsy Shoegazer by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
I Am Running with Temporary Success from a Monstrous Vacuum by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
We Always Thought the Future Would Be Kind of Fun by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: chriszabriskie.com/honor/
Artist: chriszabriskie.com/
Land of Phantoms by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
Bibliography:
Bryant, Levi. “Flat Ontology.” Larval Subjects ., 24 Feb. 2010, larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/flat-ontology-2/.
Bryant, Levi R. The Democracy of Objects. Open Humanities Press, 2011.
Collapse II: Graham Harman, On Vicarious Causation - Urbanomic. www.urbanomic.com/chapter/collapse-ii-graham-harman-on-vicarious-causation/.
Graham Harman, The Third Table - PhilPapers. philpapers.org/rec/HARTTT-3.
Graham Harman: Anthropocene Ontology, Sonic Acts, • Graham Harman: Anthrop... .
Harman, Graham. Heidegger Explained: from Phenomenon to Thing. Open Court, 2007.
Harman, Graham. The Quadruple Object. Zero Books, 2011.
Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology: a New Theory of Everything. Pelican, 2018.
Harman, Graham. Speculative Realism: an Introduction. Polity Press, 2018.
Kleinherenbrink, Arjen. Against Continuity: Gilles Deleuzes Speculative Realism. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Object-Oriented Philosophy, Graham Harman, doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/.
On Metaphysics, Objects and Decent Politics with Graham Harman, Thales' Well, • On Metaphysics, Object... .
Weird Realism. Zero Books, • Video .
Help us caption & translate this video!
amara.org/v/CZowg/

[@Nalhek]

Great video. For future reference, having some captions or just any kind of on-screen text would probably help keep things a bit more focused. Also I loved the music but it was a tad loud compared to the downkey dialogue. Also for anyone who isn't super familiar with philosophy in general; the notion of an "object" as being a physical object which you can literally hold in your hand is usually not what philosophers mean by "object". Object almost always refers to an "object of cognition or knowledge or thought or whatever" which is a much broader category which typically includes everything that can be considered "real". Thoughts can be objects, concepts can be objects, emotions can be objects, etc...

[@justwondering]

Thank you two times! We'll def keep this suggestion in mind for the next ones. Super helpful intervention about what an "object" usually means in this context, thanks again!

[@integralsonic]

Thank you both so much ! You make OOO playful in a very important and powerful way; you bring out the joy of experimenting with connections in the wake of the impossibility of ever accessing the real.

[@justwondering]

Thank you so much! That's such a lovely comment. From what we heard we knew we were good at bringing out sadness, so bringing joy wasn't quite part of our repertoire of skills, I'm very glad to hear this!

[@astrociously3381]

Great information, and the way you write the letter f is beautiful. Very nice voices too.

[@lugus9261]

As someone who's read a few OOO works this was actually very helpful and precise

[@justwondering]

Thank you, we're very glad to hear that!

[@Nick-sl7zc]

Thank you very much. In all these present catastrophes it's too easy to lose myself in dystopia.

[@dreamcult2485]

Lovely video! Only thing I might say is that you both seem very soft-spoken, and while it compliments the vibe very nicely, a more pronounced manner of enunciation + slightly reduced music volume could go a long way towards making it more easily absorbable. As it stands I felt like I was being lulled into a dream state, which again was very lovely but possibly not the most effective means of delivery. It's also totally possible that it's just me on this one though, so please take it with a grain of salt.. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series either way. :)

[@justwondering]

Haha, it's not just you. Although the SFX were intentionally pushed to be disturbing at some points, as part of the overall staging, we def might have exaggerated. Our voices also lack the needed experience for this, so they might need more practice here and there for sure. Most of the time we work with a music composer who can master the whole thing properly, as well as with a lovely theater actress for the VO. We usually read, write, draw and animate the things, so for the audio we normally prefer to collaborate with other ppl. Yet, we wanted to make something that can be produced a bit faster for this series and that it is easier to support financially. That's why we said: let's see how bad it turns out if we record it.

[@dreamcult2485]

Ahh I see, well that's totally understandable, and I think you've done an excellent job all things considered. Keep it up!

[@bramsanjanssan4908]

I was looking around on the web to see if Timothy Morton had said anything about (the hyperobject) coronavirus. And so I came across your channel: It is Great!

[@justwondering]

ah, thank you! that's awesome to hear

[@Humorless_Wokescold]

Thank you for the interesting video! I didn't entirely follow everything but then again I'm not a philosopher so I doubt I was meant to.

[@justwondering]

Thanks for watching it! I think it usually just takes more time to familiarize with certain ideas and words. You would laugh if you knew how many hours we spent reading about this philosophy!

[@Perkinson2023]

Love the music, animations, drawings and tone of voice. Great intro to OOO! Could this be a reduction of OOO ? ;)

[@raresmircea7451]

Great, thanks!

[@nikosDmark]

wow! congrats!

[@justwondering]

What’s up with this object oriented thing you keep referring to in your videos? Haven’t you heard the rumors, Harman is a liberal... And anyway, flat ontology, really? You want to give power to inanimate objects now? Why aren't those OOO-ists just embracing our species-being? Hopefully, this video will make a good introduction to Graham Harman’s theory which might spark some answers or change the questions entirely - we’ll see. So maybe, don't just scroll the internet for the worst complaints - a viable option nonetheless - and let's start by rethinking together some of our anthropocentric theories and practices. One can think here about the environmental crisis, speciesism, climate justice, and the relations that emerge between different entities, as well as the lack of relationality. One can look at causality, organization, the finitude of literal knowledge, overmining, undermining, duomining, and how they can play out. Anyway, that’s just something to start with, there are probably even more issues one can think about, so don’t stop here. - P.S. This series will look and feel a bit different, but we are still planning to release other animations in the future.

[@nikiyoung2117]

Have you considered sharing it with Harman? He is very kind and approachable. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you.

[@justwondering]

@@nikiyoung2117 Thank you! We did actually, and he liked it. And, we were pleased we didn't messed it up.

[@claudiogarcia6001]

At around eight minutes in this feels a bit like the last episodes of Evangelion. I didn't get any of it though, I'm sorry.

[@HellyeaIndeed]

Like many others, I'm not sure I fully grasp it, though some of it did make a lot of sense to me, I'd like to see if I understand you correctly on a few things- 1. One of the premises of this is that trying to "word" or observe reality in any way ultimately changes it? that trying to observe any part of reality fully leads to us distorting it's real "essence" in a way? 2. If that is the case, does it mean then, that we cannot trust our current understanding of the world at all? what should we do without in a theoretical sense? Since we can never grasp reality, how can we ever act or make any sense of the world? is the answer here supposedly to not try to make any sense of it? or hoping we eventually learn a better way to define ourselves? 3. This is the point that confused me the most- If all objects, from a trashcan to a youtube channel all have the same intrinsic value in a sense, does it mean that all things indeed equal. A youtube channel and a dog are both objects that in this ontology equal? I might misunderstand this basic point, but it seems this theory then just "avoids" giving anything philosophical weight by saying we can never truly know, thus leaving us with no better explanation of the world as we know it./ If so, is it simply the same as saying "We can never know if God exists or not since we can't define him or hope to understand". I hope I don't sound too formal or against this, these ideas are great brain-food are trying to reimagine how we view the world is beyond immense task. English is my second tongue and when I need to explain myself well my inner-noblemen comes out. Thank you for the great video, and I hope my questions are at least in the ball-park of understanding this =)

[@justwondering]

Hey, I've come up with some answers, hope they help. 1. The act of observing doesn't change what is real in-itself - its essence. It only translates it, through observation, through this form of relation, distorting things, yes. In the sense that, observing an apple isn't grasping what the apple is fully. One can touch the apple, think about the apple, or smell it, neither one of these will fully capture the nature of the apple so to speak. We're left with some kind of reductions, apple-thoughts, apple-sensations, apple-smells. In this sense, for Harman, the apple is "more than its pieces and less than its effects". It's more than its particles and components, and less than my taste of the apple - to say this more bluntly. 2. The goal isn't to be skeptical of the current material conditions when we make political decisions, nor to ignore the scientific consensus when building something physical in the world. The idea is to understand better how things relate to other things, how they exist, how we relate with them, what might escape our grasp, as well as speculating about how other beings grasp things, it's more about trying not to police what is real and not to frame it around our prejudices. 3. I think Harman defines and tries to keep ontology as something separated from a moral theory, it doesn't say how things should be treated, nor that all things have the same intrinsic value. Although I do think this theory can help with anti-speciesist fights and many more, it doesn't really define what is to be valued by definition, only that things equally exist, in the sense that nothing can be reduced to anything else, that things withdraw and so on...

[@HellyeaIndeed]

@@justwondering First of all thank you for answering so fast! As for the explanations, after having watched the video again (third time now! :) I understand it much better. Thank you for taking the time to explain this fascinating idea. I might be trying very hard to shove this theory into a box in my head which doesn't fit or contain the whole idea. It's really hard to grasp what all of this means, but it is very interesting. I've been thinking about this all day, my gf is sick of hearing about it from me already haha. Thank you again for this wonderful video and for your work.

[@justwondering]

HellyeaIndeed haha, don't upset anyone bc of OOO, we're still struggling with it, and theories keep changing

[@hestiadelibas869]

take care, read the books :)) - lovely advice

[@winnerwb]

im still confused with the content. but, does it related with quentin meillasoux or jacques ranciere ideas? sorry for bad grammar

[@justwondering]

Just that both Harman and Meillassoux are trying to overcome correlationism, the idea that we only have access to the correlation between the thinking-subject and being, which can also be understood more simply as the human-world relation. Their philosophies are different tho, for Harman the human-world relation becomes just one relation among others. Meaning that it's not the only gap that exists because this sort of indirectness is present between any "objects" (entities/beings) that communicate with one another. I don't think it has much in common with Rancière, but I might be wrong, I'm not very familiar with his writing.

[@winnerwb]

@@justwondering ok. thankyou very much for the answer

[@rustcohle733]

Hermosas voces de Europa del este hablando en inglés

[@brookeloupe3205]

cool video. the music is distracting

[@Guz579N]

Almost impossible to listen, but thank you.

[@IRL.johnny]

took me awhile to figure out the character was an F/f... music too loud at end, I wanted to learn something, but I didn't, I might not be far enough along the path to understanding ontology. best wishes.

[@thegrandnil764]

its really simple, all they are saying is that objects cannot be broken up, and every "interaction" between autonomous objects just creates a new object that itself is autonomous and cannot be broken up. 1) Objects are autonomous, individual, and cannot be broken up 2) [A] is an object, [B] is an object, and [AB] is also a separate object 3) Therefor [A] + [B] =/= [AB] because [AB] is its own object and cannot be broken up but also [A] [B] and [AB] are all equal and there it no differences in the level of existence between them

[@PHazeBeats1]

When u click to possibly learn some new shit but u end up not being able to even understand them...

[@justwondering]

sorry it didn't bring more knowledge, wish it was clearer and cleaner!

[@thegrandnil764]

this is super easy to understand lol, they just have heavy accents then blast really shitty music over the top so you cant hear them. watch it with the captions on

[@justwondering]

@@thegrandnil764 fail number one, covering accents

[@stevedempsey5098]

Great stuff but the music is too loud, or you talk to softly.

[@justwondering]

Thanks, we apreciate the feedback! I wonder what you would think of our video on Paulo Friere (last one) since it has a better mix & master.

[@stevedempsey5098]

@@justwondering thanks for getting back to me. I'll have a listen later.

[@stevedempsey5098]

@@justwondering Yes, that was much easier to understand. I'd never even heard of Friere either.

[@justwondering]

that's good to hear, thanks for letting us know! his critical pedagogy is pretty amazing, always something to consider when thinking about education :)

[@luccaseixasoliveira]

Lies are an object?

[@justwondering]

I think they can be seen as such, but the word "object" can create some confusion outside the theory. Perhaps it's better to replace it with entity in this case. So, OOO might say that a lie is a [social] entity, that can't be reduced to its effects or to its parts (words, initial intentions, a certain context), the lie can theoretically speaking pass and spread and create new outcomes if it moves and persists enough, it can become stronger in certain contexts, and yet being completely absent in others. The lie can be present in a certain way to some people, in a very different way to others, or not present at all. So, I think we can still say that a lie withdraws like other entities when we interact with it because it's never fully reducible to certain relations of which is part of, and because there's no way in which we can say what the lie is in-itself, only what it is for us, for certain actors, therefore seen from certain positions. For example, big political lies can become very pervasive and stay much longer than anyone anticipated, even after they are exposed. They no longer persist because of the initial intentions and words that made them, but mostly due to a vast network of social factors and actors.

[@silat159]

Hope I wont get schizophrenia from this video, cool video though

[@Saydyrya]

Smells like romanian in here

[@justwondering]

Saydyrya90 from the bean soup or the accents?

[@tverdyznaqs]

all is strange and vague...are we dead?...or is this ohio?...

[@justwondering]

we are equally dead and alive

[@tverdyznaqs]

@@justwondering okay, okay, all random animaniacs references aside, this is a very well-executed video, most of whiches content went over my head, but I still managed to watch till the very end and think that you guys deserve to be recognized for your efforts. The voice acting needs a lot of work though. I don't mind the accents, but the flat unconfident delivery made it harder to sit through. Other than that, keep up the good work!

[@justwondering]

Mr/Clusterfuck aww, thank you, I hope it gets better! For the animated videos we work with a VO actress. That's ideal to do for all videos actually, but uhm, that's a bit harder to support financially. Also, we said: let's give a chance to our voices and see how bad it turns out.

[@wolfjensen6830]

@@justwondering and Ohio?